


The Yellow Book of Drabbles

by Smaragdina



Category: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: Drabble Collection, F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-01-15
Updated: 2013-11-07
Packaged: 2017-10-29 13:57:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 18
Words: 12,934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/320661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Smaragdina/pseuds/Smaragdina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of drabbles about six different Dovahkiins. Each chapter will have a summary, pairing, and rating/warnings in the notes.</p><p>(This fic does NOT inhabit the same canon as 'Breaking the Dragon')</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Hunt [Etain & Aela, T]

**Author's Note:**

> Aela is hunting. So is Etain. Gen. T. Contains some gore, discussion of cannibalism.

They were nearly a day out of Whiterun when they smelled the campfire.

It was only a half-uncommon scent, this high in the mountains – bandits, most like, or a few Stormcloaks, or a solitary hunter or travelling bard. But there came the scent of blood along with it, thick and fresh under the more familiar – well, more _human –_ smoke, under the ever-present scents of the mountains: dirt and moss, fresh snow on the air, fresh wolf droppings on a deer trail, the rank three-days-fading sourness of what could only be a troll.

Blood and smoke. Lots of blood. Probably not just a lone hunter bagging rabbits. Aela whuffed a small noise and tilted her head at Farkas, signaling _I’m going to look._ There had been Silver Hand in these parts a few weeks ago, and it was better to be safe, better to know where to avoid than to blunder on blind. He nodded in agreement, an oddly human gesture in his lupine form, and she ran off.

She followed the scent, nose to air. Blood and smoke and metal, man and mer both. It brought her high into the mountains and closer to the road than she would have liked and she shifted back to herself reluctantly, thinking of guard or Legion patrols and the price men paid for a werewolf hide, took a moment to don her armor and ready an arrow. Most of the scent was gone, now, everything except a bit of the blood and the overpowering wash of smokeinvisible to her human nose, but she could see firelight flickering through the pines ahead and crept to the lip of the clearing to see.

The lone hunter – woman – who’d set up the camp had done so quickly, that much was clear, built the fire high and hot out of dry wood so that it would not smoke. The woman was crouched on the far side of the fire, butchering a kill. It was hard to see what it was through the flames but her movements were quick and purposeful, efficient, and Aela could not help admire, as she always did, a job well done. There was blood up to her elbows and two neat piles of offal at her side, a large one and a small, and she was working quickly with a knife, loud snap of bone and slice of blade through flesh as she carved off thin steaks. She turned to set them aside, and the firelight caught on the white blankness of her eye.

Etain.

Aela remembered the Bosmer. Barely. She’d come to Jorvaskrr a few days back, a thin stick of a woman wearing ragtag leather armor and carrying an old horn bow with ragged bits of fur sticking out of the ends. Farkas had almost run into her as he’d come in from sparring with his brother. Come in through the _back_ door, from the courtyard; the elf must have snuck in, and exactly _how_ Aela didn’t want to know. She’d heard the commotion and poked her head out to see Farkas pinning her to the wall by her throat, with Etain hanging there limp and nonplussed despite the way her feet were almost lifted off the floor.

“I want to join the Companions,” she’s said, blunt and direct and casual, as if there wasn’t an angry Nord two inches from her face.

“ _You_ want to join the Companions, sneakthief?” Farkas chuckled. “Why’s that, exactly? Heard we’re great warriors and thought we must have lots of old trophies to steal?”

Etain shook her head, the gesture cut short by Farkas’s hands on her collarbone. “I want to learn to hunt.” She paused, corrected, “I want to get _better._ ”

“Hunt?” Aela asked. She stepped forward, head tilted to the side. Etain watched her, a faint glimmer of hope in one eye that was quickly masked; the other, blank and blind, showed nothing. The scars that scored her face under that eye were deep and dark, and Aela wondered briefly how she’d gotten them; a big cat, it looked like, maybe a mountain lion. She motioned to Farkas to back off and let the woman breathe. “No one comes to us for _hunting._ There’s little glory in it.”

“Not unless you’re hunting dragons,” Farkas laughed, turning away with a snort.

Etain ignored him, chin high. “I want to join you,” she repeated, correcting _want_ at the last instant from _need._

“Can you use that?” Aela nodded at the bow and watched the Bosmer’s grip tighten on it, defensive. “Can you hunt?”

“ _Yes._ ”

“What?”

Etain’s jaw worked, and she did not answer.

Aela had quizzed her a bit more, but the Bosmer was blunt and sharp when she cared to answer and silent when she didn’t, and after a few minutes she’d sighed and shrugged and let Farkas throw her out. Well. Hopefully he hadn’t actually _thrown_ the woman. And her she was, a few days later, alone and high in the mountains and butchering a kill as if she’d done it all her life. So she hadn’t been lying about that, at least.

Aela shifted a bit, moving around the fire to see exactly what the kill was – a small deer, from the size of it, or maybe a goat. But she’d smelled no deer or goat when she’d been a wolf, just man and mer – the mer was obvious enough, now – and though the size was almost right the shape was wrong. There was blood under a tree from where Etain had let the animal bleed out but no hide stretched on a frame or thrown sloppily to the side, and the shape by the fire was –

She must have made a noise, because the Bosmer went deadly still, staring straight at her from across the flames.

“I’ve got a throwing knife,” she said, voice quiet and matter-of-fact. “Come into the light where I can see you. Hands up.”

Aela did so. She padded carefully around the fire and fully into the circle of light, laid down her bow on a dry patch of ground without breaking the woman’s gaze. Etain nodded once, brusque. She was crouched over the corpse of a Nord. The man’s upper half was clean and flawless except for the ruin of his throat and the slit in his abdomen where he’d been expertly gutted; below this he was half-butchered, his right leg whole and the left one in pieces, major joints cleanly separated and flesh all carved away. The steaks that Etain had laid aside were from the man’s thighs, she saw, along with his tongue, and the small pile of offal to keep was his kidneys and heart.

A breath, then two, and Etain picked up her knife and went back to work.

Aela swallowed. “Hunting?” she asked.

“Of a sort.” Etain gave a little shrug, not looking up. “Bandit. Was going to ask me for a toll. So I got the drop on him.” The flesh came away with a soft wet rip. “Might as well take what I can carry. I’d rather not stop for supplies in Riverwood.”

Aela nodded, faintly. She’d eaten men before, of course, but as a wolf _,_ when men were meat and running them down was no different than taking a rabbit or deer. And the taste of blood in her mouth in the morning always unsettled her. Blood in her mouth in human form meant injury, meant _wrong,_ and while killing a man was not…wrong, no, butchering one was – well. Not wrong either, but other, surprising, shocking even, perhaps taboo, and she felt the hair stand on the nape of her neck as she watched the thin little Bosmer move to the man’s right leg and cut into the knee to the bone. It was not something she would ever think to do. It was not something she’d ever imagine the whip-thin slip of a sneakthief doing.

“Do you often…eat men?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

A shrug. “Practical.” Another, larger shrug as she reached for a boning knife. “Kept the Green Pact when I was young. Still do. Sometimes. Kind of. It’s _not_ very practical to eat your whole kill yourself. Don’t recommend it.”

“You kill men often.”

“Yes.”

Aela heard the tread of two feet and knew that Farkas had arrived. Heard his sharp intake of breath as he saw, his muffled curse, but she did not turn her head. She crouched in front of Etain, stared at her across the white and blood-streaked expanse of the dead man’s chest. “Do you hunt men?”

Etain looked up. And she smiled. “ _Yes._ ”


	2. The Librarian [Niamh & Urag gro-Shub, G]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Niamh is not terribly responsible with her library books. Urag is less that pleased. Niamh & Urag. Gen. G.

It was missing.

The damnable book was _missing._

Urag gro-Shub, librarian of the College of Winterhold, growled under his breath. Nobody came in the Dead Civilizations corner shelf, and all his lovely hard-won books on Ayleids and Ancient Nords and Dwemer and Falmer and all the rest sat there gathering dust and breeding spiders (well, not so much the Ancient Nords; Saarthal had seen to that, and now he could barely keep them in stock, along with each and every book that had to do with giant green glowing sources of unimaginable arcane power). But there was a very obvious patch of un-cobwebbed space after _Frontier, Conquest._

“ _Glories and Laments,_ ” he muttered under his breath, tapping the shelf and squishing the few spiders that fell out with his thumb. “Ayleids. Godsdammit, girl.”

There was, of course, only on apprentice who would bother with a book on Ayleids. There was probably only on apprentice who knew what Ayleids _were._

Urag straightened the books so that the empty space didn’t look so, well, _empty,_ took out a duster from the belt of his robe and cleaned the worst of the must and age from them, knocking free a few more spiders and throwing up a cloud of dust that made him cough. Rather loudly, for a library; a few readers looked up, annoyed, and Urag hurriedly hurried up the stairs.

Grumbling, he climbed.

“Stupid girl, not respecting the books, taking it without asking, probably has a whole bunch of other stolen books up there that I haven’t noticed yet, don’t care if she’s the fetching Dragonborn…”

He grumbled and cursed and generally ill-spoke all the way up and across the courtyard (straight through a dragon’s rib cage and past two other frosted-over dragon skeletons) and into the Hall of Attainment, where he banged on the wall of her little cell. “Girl!” he called.

Niamh tilted her head back over the edge of her bed to look at him upside down, red hair hanging like a curtain to the floor. “Urag!” she said pleasantly. “I wondered how long it would take you!”

Her feet were resting on the headboard, and she held a book – _his_ book – straight in the air above her so that she could read it lying on her back. Urag stepped forward and squinted. Yes. _Glories and Laments._ _The "glories" of the Ayleid ruin Ceyatatar and "laments" over the collapse of the Ayleid civilization. He_ snatched the book out of her hands.

“Hey!”

“You’ll eat in bed again, and you’ll get fingerprints all over it, and anyway it’s _mine.”_

“Fi – fingerprints? Urag.” Niamh was laughing. “ _Urag –_ what, like I didn’t have to knock the dust out of the damn thing? _Nines,_ man.” He winced and automatically looked over his shoulder for Acano; that seemed to sober her, a bit, because she at least sat up properly. Or maybe the blood was just rushing to her head. “I needed it,” she said simply, working the kinks from her shoulders and neck. “Hetrard’s notes on the Magnus inscriptions confirm what I suspected with my own research. Though her Ayleid is _awful._ It’s a good thing she includes the original. She confuses _bal_ with _bala,_ and if I had a Septim for every time she messes up her compounded plurals…”

Urag called a warning puff of magic to his fingertips. “I could whack you over the head with this book, girl.”

“You’d never. You might damage it.”

“You could have checked it out like a normal apprentice!”

Any – well, any _normal_ apprentice in her place would have grandstanded, puffed out their chest, pointed to the dragon skeletons outside and declared themselves to be anything _but_ normal, but Niamh simply gave a small shake of her head. “I needed it,” she repeated, voice mild. “I reached my check-out limit for the month a week ago, and I knew you wouldn’t miss it, old man. You don’t want to know how many spiders fell out of this thing when I opened it. You have _got_ to set up charms against them to go with the bookworm ones.”

“Humph.” He crossed his arms, book tucked safely in the crook of his elbow. “You’ll be wanting _more books_ to invent those, won’t you.”

“Of course I will.”

“ _Humph._ ”

Niamh smiled at him as she moved to her desk and got out quill and ink, began to take notes on whatever she’d read, peppering the margins here and there with Ayleid phrases. He watched, frowning. “Urag,” she sighed, when he hadn’t moved, “whogot you all of the _Dance in Fire_ series?”

“…You did.”

It felt like pulling out one of his tusks.

“And whotracked down the second volume of _Palla_ that’s been missing ever since that what’s-his-name fell in the sea?”

“You did.”

“And whoraided Fellglow Keep and found the books that you’d been missing for _years?_ ”

“I’m just saying,” Urag grumbled. “If you tear it, or spill something on it, or set it on fire –”

“- I get dangled off the walkway. Yes, of course.” Niamh reached behind her, not looking. “Please?”

“You’ll give it back at the end of the month.”

“Please!”

“Yes! Yes, you’ll give it back, and that whole stack that’s hiding under your bed! Don’t think I can’t see that!”

“…Fine,” said Niamh dutifully. “End of the month. Oh, that reminds me.” She reached in her desk and brought out a thin volume, and Urag made a noise – an entirely undignified noise – upon reading the cover. “Here’s that treatise on different varieties of vampires that you wanted, old man.”

He snatched the book from her as if her hand was a cookfire, tossed _Glories and Laments_ on her desk, and stormed out. “End of the month!” he called over his shoulder.

“Two months!”

“No!”

“Two months or I clean out the shelf!”

“Fine!”

 _Bloody Dragonborn_ , Urag grumbled to himself, drawing his cloak tighter around himself as he braved the gusting wind of the courtyard. _Bloody, over-achieving, pompous, too-nice, **linguist** –_

He tripped over a dragon femur and went sprawling in the snow.


	3. Margins [Niamh & Urag gro-Shub, G]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Niamh is very concerned with making sure the information in the Arcaneum is correct. Niamh & Urag gro-Shub. Gen. G.

SLAM.

Niamh nearly jumped out of her seat and stared at the pile of books that Urag had just dumped on her desk, turning to give him a half-hearted glare. “What is it _this_ time, old man?”

“You wrote in the books!”

“Oh, Divines…”

“No! My books! You wrote in them!”

“It’s the duty of a scholar to make sure that all information is presented as fairly and accurately as possible,” said Niamh, voice patient and long-suffering. “All the books I wrote in were full of biases. Speculation presented as fact. Full-fledged errors. I merely corrected them.”

“A fine excuse.” He reached over and plucked the first book off the pile, cracking it open. “Look, here,” he said, pointing, “you crossed out an entire section of theory about how the Daedra manifest to mortals. How can you correct _that?_ Been talking to Azura in your sleep?”

“ _Urag._ ”

“And here! Look! Notes all over a description of Vaermina’s Skull of Corruption. So you know what the Skull of Corruption looks like now?”

“There were – carvings. Urag, there were carvings. Which reminds me.” She smiled up at him, sweetly, and he _humphed_ even before she opened her mouth. “Could you lend me your books on Daedric script while I take a small team over to Dawnstar? There’s a temple I need to properly document.”

“NO!”

“It’s just a temple! It’s already been cleared out!”

“You want your team, take it up with the Archmage in the morning,” Urag grumbled, hefting the stack of books from her desk and turning away. “You are _not_ touching my dictionaries.”

“Morning…morning… _oh._ Niamh glanced at her hourglass. Two hours into the new day. He wondered how long she’d been down here working. “Speaking of. Is Arcano asleep?”

Urag froze, a chill descending on the pit of his stomach. He wasn’t entirely sure what had chased the little Breton-named Imperial out of Cyrodiil, but he’d heard rumors, and they all had to do with the Thalmor. “Niamh,” he started, nervously, “whatever you’re planning, don’t –”

“No – oh, Divines, no, it’s not that. I just have a thing – a theory I need to test.”

He studied her, hair all frazzled and skin too pale under her freckles, dark, dark circles under her eyes. There was even a line of soot on her neck from whatever experiment or insane battle she’d gotten into last. He wondered when she’d last slept. “You want to bring your work up to the Arcaneum when you’re done?” he sighed.

Because, alright, it _was_ nice having another person in the Arcaneum on the long nights when he didn’t sleep either.

Niamh’s smile lit up all her face. “That would be lovely.”

“I’ll make tea,” Urag sighed, looking at that too-bright smile and wondering why he’d suggested this, wondering if he would have to lock up all his ink and quills to keep her from writing in any more books. He started off.

“Oh!” she called. “And could you pull some Daedric dictionaries for me?”

“NO!”

But he did.


	4. Animal Allegiance [Etain & Aela, G]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aela is less than pleased to find out who Etain's been working with. Etain & Aela. Genfic. G. Microfic.

Head ringing – familiar sharp metallic taste in her mouth – and Etain just managed to twist out of the way, so that Aela’s second blow just barely caught her on the ear instead of the jaw. “You bloody _idiot,_ ” the woman snarled – _idiot, idiot,_ if she hadn’t been such an _idiot_ she would have been able to duck the _first_ one in time, she wouldn’t have mentioned this at _all_ – “do you know what he _is?_ Do you know what he _did?_ ”

“Arnbjorn?” Etain spat out a bit of blood and laughed. “What? Did he _enjoy_ it too much? Is he a little too savage for the Companions? Did he like _eating_ people a little too much? Is he like me? Did he carve them up and –”

Aela gave a wordless growl of a sound and shoved her back again and Etain braced herself for another blow as the woman tried to beat some sense in her, tried to make her give up _family_ in favor of _pack –_ but the huntress just made a disgusted noise and left, leaving the Bosmer to lick her wounds, to tongue the taste of blood from the corner of her mouth and shake with silent laughter. 


	5. Penitence [Niamh/Marcurio, G]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Niamh finds herself in Riften, of all places, seeking forgiveness. Niamh/Marcurio. Gen. G.

The temple in Riften was an old, ill-built thing, like the rest of the city. There were swallows nesting in the rafters and holes in the roof that let in water when it rained, and the whole building listed slightly. Not enough to notice, but enough so that when a priest dropped a candle it rolled, steadily, until it hit the wall behind the altar.

Niamh barely noticed.

 _Mara forgive me. Mara forgive me. Mara forgive me._

Her knees ached from hours on the floor, and she knew that once she stood her back would scream in a thousand protests, but she could not bring herself to move.

 _Come to me, Mara, for without you, I might forget the ways of our fathers, and preening by the light of latest fashion, my words might tremble like the thin reeds of novelty in the tempest of enthusiasms._

That was the way the prayer went, yes; and that was right, wasn’t it? Tempest of enthusiasms? Because she had been feeling nothing in that cursed old temple _but_ enthusiasm, the same academic passion that sent her delving into ruins, battle dragons, raising the dead. Curiosity and a love of the old and the dead and forbidden had gotten her run out of Cyrodiil. It had run her all the way up High Hrothgar. It was going to be the death of her.

It had certainly been the death of _him._

 _Forgive me, Mara, for I have killed one of your faithful servants, in a crime of greed and pettiness. I killed because I coveted that which he tried to destroy. And though I told myself that I distrusted him, that he would turn on me, that was only the Daedra speaking, that was not what lived in my heart._

 _I have lived in his body through Daedric arts, spoken his words, known his thoughts, known him to be full of fear and not the man he was, and then I have taken his life._

Brother Casimer. Erandur. The name did not matter.

Brother Maramal had smiled at her when she arrived, taken her hands in his own, touched her face and asked if she wished for guidance or confession. And she did; of course she did – but how was she to tell him that she had murdered one of his brothers?

Stabbed him straight in the back, literally, without warning, because it was quick, because the ritual to destroy the Skull of Corruption was almost done, and she could not let that happen.

Corruption.

Ha.

And now _Corruption_ was sitting safe in her room in Winterhold. She’d tested and documented and studied it, inch by seething inch. She _knew_ Corruption.

 _Forgive me, Mara. I know I should destroy the artifact, but I cannot bring myself to do it –_

Because it was a priceless artifact, it _was,_ unique, and because it was not…evil, no, Daedra were not inherently evil, stealing the dreams of others was _not_ evil, not so long as she only did it to study, not so long as she only stole from wretched men like Arcano –

Niamh made a small sound and focused on the pain of her aching knees on the cold and rough-cobbled floor.

 _Mara forgive me._

The door to the Temple of Mara opened and she heard a quiet discussion, Maramal and a voice she knew well. He approached and laid a hand on her shoulder. The touch was gentle and it was the first touch she’d felt in hours, it made her jump, and she made a small sound and bowed her head.

“How long have you been here, love?” asked Marcurio, quiet.

“Long,” she murmured. _Mara forgive me. I have killed a priest._ “Not long enough.” _I have killed an innocent man because I was vain, because I wanted a bit of history in my hands to see and touch and use. Because I_ still _want it._

Marcurio sighed, stroked her hair. He would have used their time in Riften to catch up on old friends, she knew, meet old contacts, get drunk with men she never wished to meet (tenuous ties to the Thieves’ Guild, the Brotherhood, _something),_ and the fact that he was here meant _worry._ Meant that more time must have passed than she thought. She could smell the rain on him, the wet fish-and-mildew damp of the Riften streets, and a distinct lack of ale or mead. “You should go back outside,” she said softly, not lifting her head.

“Do you want me to?” He traced a curl of hair with his fingertip. “You’re going to wear out your knees, at this rate. And Maramal is worried.”

“Let him worry.”

“Mmm. He’s getting worried in that crotchety priest way of his. It’s rather unsettling.”

Oh.

 _I’m worried._

Niamh closed her eyes and braced herself for the pain of rising, Restoration magic already in her hands to sooth away the worst of it as Marcurio hooked an arm under hers and helped pull her to her feet. She stumbled and he steadied her, watched as she cast a golden glow around herself to erase…well.

Not the blame.

 _Mara forgive me. I have killed Your priest, and I have worried the one I love._

“Better?” he asked, and she nodded. He smiled, bright and crooked and belying the buried concern in his eyes. “You going to tell me what that was about?”

 _No,_ thought Niamh, but what she said was “someday.”


	6. Saturnalia: Friends [Etain & Arnbjorn, G]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Etain spends time with friends at Saturnalia. Etain & Arnbjorn. Genfic. G.

The sun is setting over Lake Illinata. It’s snowing even this far south, just a few nights shy of Saturnalia as it is, and the light is coloring the lace-thin layer of ice by the shoreline with bands of red and orange. Light is catching on the few falling snowflakes. They’re dusting the trees, tangling in the wind, catching on the ends of Etain’s dark hair that escape her hood. They stick there, white and crusting. She brushes them off with an impatient hand.

Sithis-damned snow.

It means that she’s easy to _track,_ which means that Cicero will be springing on her any minute to launch himself as a red and jingle-belled blur around her midsection.

Hopefully, he’ll remember to put down his present first.

It had (she reflects, cursing) been Gabriella’s damn idea that the Family all get one another new knives for Saturnalia. But it had been Cicero’s idea that they _hide_ them. Etain had heard the shout that meant he’d found his (a stiletto, baked inside one of Gabriela’s extra-large apple-nut sweetrolls) and she’d slipped out the door as fast as she could. She does _not_ need the jester’s high-pitched giggles of thanks.

She doesn’t need the Family at all, really. Does not need their twisted takes on the holiday, or their even-more-twisted takes on Brotherhood tradition. She does not need any new knives, either; she has enough, more than enough, enough that it is starting to get _awkward_ when she empties out her hidden pockets at the end of the day, boning knives and skinning knives and stabbing knives and slashing-the-jugular knives, and she does not need any of it.

She certainly does not need to spend any more time around the poisonous mistletoe that Festus had brought home.

So she’d left.Hopefully the Companions will have more sensible holiday plans.

Well. Less fatal ones.

There’s a rumor that they all jump naked into the freezing river at the stroke of midnight on Saturnalia, but she hopes it’s just a _rumor._

The snow is falling on ice and stone and grass and tree with a soft not-sound, and a stick snaps to Etain’s right. She turns her head, sharply, expecting a cackling jester, a jubilant _thanks! –_ but there’s nothing there. Silence. Familiar scents on the air, yes – snow and wind and something like wet dog – and there’s another clatter from farther to her right. It’s the clink of stone on thrown stone, but by the time she realizes this she’s already turned and her blind left flank is open to –

The man comes out of the snowberries with a loud roar and hits her somewhere about the midsection.

Etain goes down with a yell. He is _big,_ bigger than Cicero and much bigger than her, and he’s _roaring_ as he catches her in what can almost be called a bear hug and they tumble to the ice-crusted sand. He is roaring and he is laughing but there’s a knife in his hand, and he’s batting away her hands as he reaches for her own. He’s right there, overwhelming, too much, loud and hairs and fur and the smell of fresh blood and wet dog and apple-nut sweetrolls, and she fights to bring up a knee, drive it into his stomach to make him let out a loud _oof._ She uses the space to twist – not away, she can’t get away, but the knife he has awkwardly pressed into her back against leather and skin is twisted at an awkwarder angle still, harmless, and Etain can throw herself sharply against the ground to make him chose letting go or snapping his wrist. He chooses the former. She knees him again, shoves him off, picks up the knife and skitters up the shore and away.

He just lies there, panting, starting to laugh.

Etain squints.

“Arnbjorn?”

“Well, you can handle yourself,” the man laughs, the words breathless and a bit pained. He rolls to his knees, gives her a bitter smile. “Guess I can see why my wife picked you.”

“Do you even know how to _use_ that knife?”

The sound that Arnbjorn makes is more of a bark than a laugh. Etain echoes it, stepping up to pull him up – he has a few feet and over a hundred pounds on her, and she nearly overbalances. He nods a thanks and gestures at her hand, the one still gripping his knife. “Happy Saturnalia.”

She looks down. The knife is short and stiff and practical, the kind Arnbjorn favors – but it is also a _boning_ knife, heavy enough for elk or men, and it is very shiny and very, very new. “I’d wanted to hide it in your kidneys,” Arnbjorn explain, and she can’t help but smile. “Careful,” he grunts, when she goes to test the tip on a finger. “Silver.”

Etain catches his eye, gestures for him to walk with her eastward along the edge of the lake. “I wonder why.”

“I was thinking you could use it on some old mutual friends.”

Etain laughs, looks away to hide a face that _isn’t._ The thought is anything but funny. She can’t say anything against Astrid, not to him, not to her husband, but the woman’s preaching of _duty_ and _family_ has always sat bitter in Etain’s mouth, forced, while the Companions in Whiterun have more of a family – more of a _pack –_ than any ‘brother’ or ‘sister’ of this little outpost of the Brotherhood can boast.

But she can’t say any of that, not a word, so she finds a space for her knife in the pockets of her leathers and sheathes it, walks with Arnbjorn in silence for a while in the falling snow. The lake drops down below them, below an outcropping of pale stone, and the sunset light is fading to purple and blue. It’s very early in the evening but the stars are already out, this close to Saturnalia.

“You’re spending the holiday with them, yeah?” Arnbjorn asks.

Etain is startled by the question because there _is_ no question, because she flat-out told the Brotherhood she’d be in Jorvaskrr if anyone needed her. “Yes,” she manages, blunt, “and?”

“You heard what they do for Saturnalia, yeah? The river?”

She eyes him warily, nods.

Arnbjorn smiles. It’s unsettling, recalling a snarl more than anything. “Got another present for you,” he says, and Etain cocks her head, opens her mouth to say _what –_

He gives her a push.

She is over the bank and through the whisper layer of ice, and the only word she can hear before water and cold and _cold_ rushes over her head is a laughing bark of “practice!”


	7. Saturnalia: Family [Niamh, G]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Niamh reflects on family at Saturnalia. Niamh. Genfic. G.

It’s the eve of Saturnalia and wind is howling high in the reaches of Solitude, rattling the windowpanes and whistling in through the cracks, whistling down the chimney and making the fire in the hearth sputter and hiss. Niamh draws her blanket tighter around herself and eyes it as if it has done her wrong, personally.

There are a lot of things that have done her wrong. It seems like everything has, this time of year.

Well.

Not personally.

That would be odd.

So she’s been hitting the holiday mead a little hard, what of it?

She’s stuck in Solitude. She’s stuck because Ulfric is massing troops along his borders and they’re drawn up and poised to pounce as soon as the holiday truce is over, blocking each and every road that leads eastward home. Which, ironically, is Ulfric’s own city; she doesn’t know why the man allows it, doesn’t know why she was stupid enough to think it could work, but it _does,_ probably because the both of them find it amusing.

All of Skyrim and all a Stormcloak army stand between her and home, on the very eve of Saturnalia.

Niamh wishes she had more mead.

But that would require going downstairs. The sounds of revelry are faint but ever-present though the door and through the floor – every Legion soldier that isn’t in the field is getting drunk in Solitude tonight, on imported brandy and mead made by the families of those they’ll murder on the ‘morrow, drunk and feasting and dancing to traditional tunes played by bards from the local College. She’d been down there, for a while. It had been odd, sure, but she’d been down and dancing with the rest of them, red hair done up in a loose bun and gold and emeralds hanging around her neck. She’d danced with a half-dozen soldiers, at least (because Marcurio wasn’t there, was back east, back _home,_ on the other side of a country and a Stormcloak army, and because nothing was going to happen and anyway he wouldn’t have cared). She’d danced and smiled and even remembered how to laugh as the bards had played _Hark the Herald Daedra Sing_ and _Joy to Nirn_ and – daringly – _Good King Uriel,_ and she’d forgotten the war, the dragons, all of it.

And then they’d taken a break from the holiday theme, and that had been well and good, _Age of Agression_ and all the Legion marching songs that she’d learned at her parents’ knees. Until one smart young fiddler had gotten it in his head to play _The Dragonborn Comes._

And the hall had gone quiet, and heads had turned, and now Niamh is somehow sitting upstairs in Tullius’s guestroom with an empty bottle of mead, wondering if it’s worth braving the awestruck eyes of the green recruits to go and get another one.

Probably not.

 “This,” she tells the guttering fire, voice heavy with bitterness, “is not the Saturnalia of my childhood.”

The fire makes no reply.

It can’t be the Saturnalia of her childhood, of course, because Saturnalia is supposed to mean home.

 _Home_ home.

The Imperial City. Cyrodiil.

Not Windhelm, even, though she supposes that must be home now – though this is her first real Saturnalia in Skyrim, the first where she’s not a fugitive who’s legally dead, becayse even though she’s been here for over a year she will likely _never_ get used to the place. Cyrodill has always been her home and always will be, Thalmor or no, exile or no. And Marcurio is helping, yes (even though he’s not _here,_ he’s back at home-that-isn’t), but Cyrodiil is still her home.

Because –

(And she really does need that mead now, Niamh thinks, if this is how the evening’s going, she really honestly does)

\- Family.

She’s been here over a year, and it took half of that time to get word to them that she wasn’t _dead,_ and even then she hasn’t received a single letter.

It is, she supposes, to be expected.

Mom is still Legion after all, stuck in the City by duty if not by choice, Thalmor eyes upon her day and night. And Gareth – her brother must have finished his training, finally, he must have, which means he has a post in Talos-knows-where and must not even _know_ she’s alive. He must still think his older sister died at Helgen, burnt or disemboweled or decapitated, turned traitor against her family’s Legion.

He must have shipped out and must be spending his Saturnalia in High Rock, or something, somewhere safe, telling drunken stories about how his beloved sister died working for the Stormcloaks.

Damn it all.

Niamh is on her feet, empty bottle in hand, when there comes a knock at the door. “Yes?” she snaps, and sets the bottle down, because it’s probably Tullius and it wouldn’t do well to have her father’s former commanding officer see her _drunk._

“Niamh?” someone calls. It’s a boy, young, young and wavering enough that he has to be one of the fresh recruits who just arrived a day ago. The ones who had stopped and _stared_ when the bard had launched into _The Dragonborn Comes_ and called her name. “Are – are you Niamh Selone?”

“The one and only? Yeah, that’s me.” She waits, but there’s no noise, no further praise, nothing. “You still there?”

The door opens.

Niamh stares.

He is older, now, older than she’d realized. He’s cut his hair and grown out a bit of a beard, which is why she mustn’t have recognized him with the others downstairs, and he’s paler than before – so much paler, shock and joy bright in his eyes that are the exact same shade and shape as hers –

“ _Gareth!”_

And that all she can get out before she’s flung herself at him, arms around his shoulders, and her little brother catches her up in a hug.


	8. Saturnalia: Home [Relyn, G]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Relyn finds her way home for Saturnalia. Relyn. Genfic. G.

It is far, far too early for decent people to be awake.

The sunlight that’s leaking through the narrow windows of the College of Winterhold is weak and cold, and Relyn glances blearily through the glass to see that the grey sea outside is just barely tipped with sunrise-light. “You,” she tells the other apprentices, “are all _insane._ ”

“Cheer up, Relyn, it’s Saturnalia!”

“All of you, you’re all fetching _insane._ ”

“Oh, shush.” J’Zargo passes her another steaming cup of Azura-knows-what-he-calls-it, some bitter-tasting concoction from his homeland that’s flavored with far, far too much sugar. Possibly moonsugar. It’s supposed to wake her up, though Relyn has determined that she could probably drink a gallon of this stuff and still sleepwalk through the rest of the day.

According to the hourglass, they’d woken her up at four.

 _Four._

Yup. Fetching _insane._

The Elsweyri drink has gotten her through the morning, though, so she had to give it credit. It has gotten her through all the gift-giving – well, almost all of it – the heavy knit socks for Tolfdir and new books for Urag, _nothing_ for Arcano. She’d started to nod off by J’Zargo’s gift, a pointed hat that flamed very prettily when anyone but the owner touched it, albeit in a rather explosive fashion.

That one was Relyn’s own idea.

She’s quite pleased with it. It’s fitting, really; testing the Khajiit’s spells had burnt giant holes in her very best robes. Her _favorite_ robes. They had been old, from Morrowind, enchantments the only thing keeping them from disintegrating with age, and she had been furious to see them ruined.

And now the gifts are all but done and everyone is sitting happily by their little pile, and the miniature Dwemer construct that someone had received happily whizzing about and poking holes into everything it could reach. Relyn stretches, wincing as her neck cracks.

Everyone has their own little pile but _her,_ of course.

She swallows down the burn in her throat that wants to tell her she’s upset.

Because she can’t be, not really. She doesn’t live in the College like the others; she lives nowhere, lives on the _road_ most of the time, the never-ending trek between Dwemer ruin and Daedric shrine and dragon and dragon and dragon. She might as well live in Windhelm’s Gray Quarter, for all the time she spends there; or perhaps at the foot of Ulfric’s Stormcloak’s too-tall throne. He could gift her a cushion, grant her the title of ‘most annoying petitioner.’ Formally recognize her position as Champion of the Dunmer in Windhelm as _hers,_ as _home._ It is the closest thing to home she’s had after fleeing Sadrith Mora all those years ago, after all.

It would be a perfectly fitting Saturnalia gift.

She has made friends with the other apprentices, yes, but she is not one of them, not really. Not ever. She is Dragonborn and she is Telvanni-taught, she learned to summon Golden Saints when Ommund was still in his swaddling clothes, she grew up in a Tel that does not exist anymore where magic thrummed in the living walls. She is an apprentice only in name. If this were House Telvanni, she would be a Mouth at least.

At _least._ Possibly a Magister.

The thought wakes her up but does nothing for her mood.

The light through the windows is getting brighter, bit by bit, and some of the older mages have already left. Relyn downs another swallow of the steaming concoction in her hand and stands to leave, but Brelyna is there, somehow, gray hand on her shoulder is pushing her back down. “Sit,” she says cheerfully.

“Sitting,” Relyn echoes, obedient and just a tiny bit bitter.

J’Zargo laughs, the sound a purr. “You are looking like you are not happy to be here, yes?”

“Thinking of when I was a little girl,” she mutters. It’s enough to shut up him.

Brelyna moves her hand from her shoulder, steps in front of her. There is something behind her back and Relyn frowns, moves to see, frowns more when the other Dunmer laughs and turns so that she can’t. “You…” She swallows. “You _got_ me something?”

“You sound so surprised,” says Onmund.

“I…”

“Close your eyes,” Brelyna murmurs.

Relyn does so, feels the girl set something small in her cupped hands, round, cool and ceramic and top-heavy.

“Open!”

She does.

It’s a little pot, a tiny pot, small enough to easily fit between her hands, holding a tiny mushroom. The fungus is green, a neat green rounded cap atop a straight green little stock, and in the milky morning light – or perhaps just in Relyn’s imagination – the little plant seems to breathe.

There is a tiny twig stuck in the dirt, too, with a tiny sign on it that she has to squint to read.

 _Tel Nerethi._

The burn is back in her throat, stronger, and she has to blink her eyes.

“You talk about it all the time,” says Brelyna, quietly, because Relyn _can’t._ “Morrowind. House Telvanni and all of it. So the three of us…um…”

“You –“ she tries again. “You got me a Tel.”

“Well. Yeah. Not as grand as the one you grew up in, but…it’ll get there.”

“Just give it a hundred years or so,” offers Onmund, helpfully.

Relyn laughs, startled, and it’s enough to break the tension, set them laughing with her, enough so that she doesn’t care when or why her cheeks are wet. She touches a glowing fingertip to the tiny mushroom and sees it stand at attention, grow a hair or two higher before it shudders and seems to catch its breath.

Well. It’s a start.

It’s more than a start.


	9. Five Favorite Uses of an Atronach [Agarwaen, T]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Agarwaen was a Thalmor inquisitor until an inhaled fire spell stole her rank and her voice. Still, she takes pleasure in the small things. Gen. T. Brief mentions of torture.

1.

They are very useful for holding down prisoners, Agarwaen finds.

It's not their stregnth. Or the way the touch of the fire ones can burn and bubble the skin. It is, she thinks, the eyes. Blank. Not the constructed portals to Oblivion like the greater Daedra; just empty pits. Not something that can be screamed or reasoned with. Cold. Inhuman. Merciless.

It makes for a good strong lesson on what the Thalmor are, and what they are prepared to give.

2. 

They keep her drugged on magicka-poisons that blister the half-healed inside of her throat. Keep her coughing blood in the middle of the night. Tasting fire. Still, they are sloppy. They think that inability to speak (or scream, or ask for mercy that she knows they do not give because she did not give it herself) means inability to cast. A fortnight after her accident, then two, and she begins to miss her doses. It is the first time that she has seen the Thalmor be anything less than perfect. 

The first night she can she casts the spell outside her bars, listens to the Atronach tear through robe and flesh. When it's done she has it return and dutifuly lift the cell door of its hinges. The waves of cold that roll off the creature are soothing. Pleasant on burned lips and skin. She follows in its pale-glow wake on her way out of her people's prison; and by the time she reaches the sun, her toes are frostbitten from walking on a sheet of ice, but she does not care.

3.

She's high in the mountains and halfway to Skyrim when she first finds that Flame Atronachs can double as wonderful campfires. 

4.

It's a familiar position. Agarwaen's feet are cut and bleeding and the rain has soaked her skin, and the gate guard's arms are crossed. His face behind the helmet is surely carved from stone. She counts out a handful of gold coins and holds it out, thinking of warm beds and roaring fires and wine that will do nothing to loosen her throat.

The guard snorts, turns his head away. "You think bribes will let you into this city, elf?"

She presses her lips tight. The coins go back in her pouch and she lifts her chin, squares her shoulders and snaps her fingers. The guard jumps back and draws his sword as fire appears out of the air and swirls itself into being. Universal language. Quite deliberately, she smirks.

_ What about threats? _

5. 

The inn is warm, the wine warmer, and Agarwaen curls in bed and pulls the sheets up high. The din down below is shaking dust from the roof. There is a fiddler and at least two drummers, she thinks, and a Khajiit on a strange stringed instrument from the savage south. And there is song. Drunkenness and dancing and stamping feet. Horns of ale thrown on the floor. Laughter.

She waves her hand and watches the Atronach form in the corner of the room.

She supposes that she should be afraid. Of the blank and empty and merciless eyes, the hands that can dumbly hold down. Of the fire that makes up its skin and the memory of fire burning past lips and throat and into lungs.

But it is fire in the shape of a man.

It is company in that too-loud little room, silent and strong and passing no judgments; and Agarwaen curls up tighter and holds onto that thought as she slowly falls asleep.


	10. Graffiti [Niamh, G]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Niamh is not cut out for Thieves' Guild business...not in any sense of the term. Genfic. G.

They are taunting her. There's no other explanation.

Niamh has been down in the Ratway for days. Not continuous, no; she's not quite as mad as the people that skulk around down here. Another hour, though, and she may be close. She has mapped out the entire damn thing. She has battled skeevers that have grown to the size of wild dogs, and dogs tamed by lunatics, and lunatics that smell like dead skeevers. She has fallen down pits and almost drowned in water that's green with slime. She has been lit on fire by a man who ranted about stolen sweetrolls.

Twice.

And she has still not found the Thieves' Guild.

She's beginning to think - well, she's beginning to think a lot of things. That her public promise to Mjoll that she'd wipe them from the face of Tamriel was, perhaps, not the smartest decision. That the charming man in the market who'd called her "lass" and given her a map of the Ratways to help had, perhaps, not been helping. That, perhaps, she will _never_ get the smell of filth and slime and muck out of her clothes.

That they are, indeed, mocking the _shit_ out of her.

Because she's found a wall. A wall with a message scrawled upon it. The paint is fresh, and the runes it forms are very familiar. They are in _Ayleid_. Niamh is likely the only living person left in Skyrim who can read Ayleid, never mind the fact that she's an _expert_ ; and the paint is so very fresh, and this is quite clearly meant for her.

It's definitely a trap.

It is _so_ absolutely a trap.

But it's Ayleid, and it's for her, and the runes are the Skyrim-regional variant that she's less familiar with which means she can _practice_ , so Niamh sets down her lantern and sits down cross-legged and tries not to notice the state of the floor or the things it will do her trousers. She shutters her lantern to set a beam of light shining on the wall and she copies down the text, and then she stares at it, listening to the _drip drip drip_ of water down the tunnel mark the minutes.

By the time she's done her lantern has burned low and her knees are stiff, and she is sure of three things.

One: the man who'd translated it had abysmal Ayleid, but she's pretty sure that the use of _wel_ in the feminine is meant to be understood as _lass_.

Two: if the Thieves' Guild puts that much effort into telling her she has _the head of a bull but with far fewer brains, and a mother the size of a moon,_ she is hopelessly outclassed in finding them.

Three: while she was sitting, someone had stolen her purse.


	11. Heart's Day: Magic [Niamh/Marcurio, M]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Niamh/Marcurio, M. The first of six shipping drabbles.

Niamh sits straight up in bed with a start.

There comes a grumbling and a shifting from the pile of blankets next to her, and some of the blankets sit up as well and resolve themselves into a very bleary-eyed Marcurio. He’s squinting at the darkness. And at her. “Not assassins  _again…_ ”

“I had an idea,” says Niamh. The words puff white upon the air. “Septimus needs dwemer blood to open the box, right?”

“Dear…”

“Hermaeus Mora  _told him_  to synthesize it from the blood of all the elven races. Which can’t be right. Or ethical. No. Listen. I had a brilliant idea.” She twists back to look at him. “You’re not  _listening_.”

“Dear, what did I tell you about mad inspiration in the middle of the night?”

Niamh isn’t listening either. “If I find a Dwemer automaton powered by a  _black_ soul gem and trace the soul back to the Soul Cairn –” Marcurio makes a pained noise and nuzzles a cluster of freckles on her shoulder, and she breaks off with a laugh. “You’re trying to distract me.”

“Damn right I am.” A kiss at the seam of her neck. “It’s too late for crackpot theories about souls.”

“Technically it’s early.”

“Come back to bed.”

“We’re _in_ bed.” She moves to get up. “Just let me write this down –”

A yelp, a flash of magic, and a great rustling of bedcovers, and Niamh finds herself neatly tucked into her side of the bed with fine green paralysis magic rippling over her skin. Marcurio doesn’t look the least bit sorry. “You’ll remember it in the morning, love,” he grumbles. It’s half a yawn. He brushes a curl of red hair away from her face before burrowing back under the blankets. “Go back to sleep.”

He snaps his fingers to release the spell a moment later – and leaps from bed cursing every single Aedra and Daedra as Niamh’s frost spell chases him down the hall.

There is a very quiet and very giggling magical duel, then, as Niamh conjures snowballs out of the air and Marcurio melts them with little puffs of fire, and every time she approaches the writing desk she finds herself frozen stiff, and she eventually allows him back into bed after watching him slip on ice on the first and second attempts. Niamh never writes the idea down. She bites it into his skin instead. She wraps her legs around him and murmurs theories about conjuration magic and snatches of summoning spells. Her voice cracks. When her explanation of how to use Azura’s Star stutters off into a breathy moan, Niamh begins to giggle. Marcurio apologizes. Kisses a smile into the corner of her mouth. He finishes the explanation for her in stops and starts, and when they finish they curl around each other and he connects the freckles on her skin as she traces drafts of runes and sigils onto his.

In the morning, they leave for Blackreach.


	12. Heart's Day: History [Relyn/Kharjo, G]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Relyn/Kharjo, G. The second of six shipping drabbles.

She’s turning to go, drawing her scarf tight against the bitter cold, but something in the Khajiit’s accented voice makes Relyn stop. She blinks at him. “I’m sorry?”

Kharjo shrugs. It’s certainly no bow. “Take care of yourself,” he repeats. “This one’s amulet is not worth your life.”

The wind whips around them both, and it seems to carry Relyn’s sense away with it.

“I…” She wets her lips. “I’ve had slaves. Did I tell you that I used to be House Telvanni? Before…” She waves a hand, vaguely. She’s not sure what she’s waving at. The hills around Dawnstar are endless, rolling, and there is fine white powder in the air, but this is where the similarities end. Snow is not ash. The town in the distance is no Tel. These are things that she will never see again.

Kharjo cocks his head, and looks at her, and Relyn curses herself for never taking the time to learn how to read beast-race faces.

“ _Khajiit_  slaves,” she stresses. “I’ve never – I’m not sure why I’m telling you this.”

He gives her a sharp-toothed smile. “You are unused to having Khajiit worry for you, yes?”

“Well. Yes.”

“How long since you had slaves?”

“One hundred, two hundred years – a long time.” Relyn winces. “I’ll just – go.”

“Take care in the ruins, Sera Nerethi.”

“Don’t call me that!” she yells over her shoulder. Draws the scarf tighter around her face. She has not been a  _Sera_  in one hundred, two hundred years, and everything the name  _Nerethi_ used to mean is buried under ash, and the Tels are twisted and dead, and with the wind howling around her she can’t hear the rest of what Kharjo says but she’s afraid that he’s  _laughing._

(He isn’t)

 She means to travel to Windhelm, to petition Ulfric Stormcloak about cleaning up of the Grey Quarter for the sixth or sixtieth time, but she finds her feet carrying her west instead. It’s only when she finds herself halfway through a crumbling ruin, with a certain amulet swinging from her gloved fingertips, that she realizes  _why._

She means to go straight to Windhelm after that, too.

(She doesn’t)

When she gives it to Kharjo, he is so excited that he forgets himself and babbles in Ta’agra for a minute; and it does not occur to Relyn that the language is unsettling or savage, and when he grins it’s impossible for her to _not_  understand what that means.

When she leaves the caravan, he goes with her.

When he leaves her at the gates of the Palace of Kings and goes to wait for her in the cornerclub, his whiskers brush against her cheek and his fur is very soft and it takes her a minute to realize what has just happened and another to realize that she’s not horrified at  _all_. She cannot meet with Ulfric Stormcloak for at least an hour. It takes her that long to stop blushing as dark as her eyes.


	13. Heart's Day: Duty [Bethoc/Ulfric Stormcloak, T]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bethoc / Ulfric Stormcloak, T/M. The third of six shipping drabbles.

Each day, Bethoc trains until she bleeds. Her hands blossom with ugly white blisters that pop and smear the grip of her sword with red, that harden into calluses. Her hands are not used to this kind of labor. She has chopped wood and diced alchemy ingredients, carried stacks of books, swept the snow from windowsills an doors, but when she walked from Winterhold to Windhelm the only weapon she carried was a woodcuter’s axe. She buried the axe in a stump outside the city. She swore on bended knee to wield no weapon but a sword, and to wield no sword for any man but the true High King of Skyrim. Her body, it seems, is slow on the uptake.

Because she is an enchanter’s daughter who never held a sword, they call her Bethoc the Bold. Because she is an enchanter’s daughter who never held a sword, they call her Bethoc the Brawnless. Each day, she works to be worthy of one title and not the other.

Each night, she collapses into bed. Her body is one solid bruise. She can see the other recruits looking, wincing in sympathy. She does not want their sympathy; she has earned these marks. She does not want their eyes on her. She wants no eyes on her but his.

Each night, drifting off to sleep, she dreams of him. He is the rightful king. He  has a voice that can shatter stone and shatter the shield-walls of Imperial armies. When she marched into the Palace of the Kings and slopped snow all over his floor and dropped to her knee before him, he  _looked at her_  – in surprise and amusement and faint disapproval, yes. But it was a start. Ulfric’s smiles put her in mind of glaciers, craggy and cracked and slow, and she will be worthy of a true one someday.

She  _will_.

She will be his lieutenant and his trusted right hand, someday, even if she has to break every bone in her body to do it. Bethoc has spent her youth surrounded by old men who hem and haw and do not act and do not believe in anything. She knows that life is not for her. She knows that this is where she needs to be.

Some nights, late, when she twists in her narrow bunk and presses her hand against her mouth and her hand between her legs, she thinks of dropping to her knees before his throne when no one but him is around, of his fingers tangling in her hair, of his voice rolling over her and breaking like thunder.

It’s nearly a treasonous thought. Each night, Bethoc swears to herself that she won’t imagine it, she won’t, she  _won’t_.

When he comes around to inspect the new recruits, and his eyes land on her, she’s frozen as if struck by lightning. When she cries out in the dark, it’s not  _quite_  his name, and the sky above rolls with a distant storm.


	14. Heart's Day: Status [Agarwaen/Ondolemar, T]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Agarwaen/Ondolemar (sort of), T - WARNING for allusions to nonconsensual breeding programs. The fourth of six shipping drabbles.

Her pedigree is excellent.

This is one of the things that keep Agarwaen up nights, along with the rattle in her lungs that only worsens as winter constricts around her chest. Altmer aren’t meant for cold. What’s left of her lungs isn’t meant for it either.

Her pedigree is excellent, her breeding and bloodline obvious in her face. Her eyes are almond and the desired shade of orange-copper, her cheekbones high, her nose straight and hooked, her skin flawless and golden and in perfect, precise compliment to her hair. Her features hold nothing of the lesser races. She is tall. She is fit. Her voice, before the fire took it, was lovely. She is –  _was_  – a perfect example of everything the glorious Aldmeri Dominion is supposed to be.

Whenever she remembers this, Agarwaen drags herself out of rickety beds in backcountry inns and walks east and north until she  _can’t._

Her dremora keeps her company. This one is a kynval. She can summon as high as a markynaz, but she finds them unruly. Before the fire she would have found it insulting to summon anything less than her full potential. Before the fire, Ondolemar would have matched her summon for summon, smiling a chill and blazing little smile as their respective combatants dueled each other in the prison yard.

They had thrived on such contests. They had always pushed each other higher.

Agarwaen’s dremora catches these thoughts, and lengthens its stride to walk with her down the miserable deer-path somewhere in the Rift (she’s not sure where she’s going, only that it’s  _away_  from Markarth and Ondelemar’s post). “This mortal is an opponent of yours,” it intones. “I do not understand why you flee him.”

Agarwaen can only  _think_  her answer, and the dremora growls. “That makes even less sense. If the two of you were allies–”

(she  _winces,_  but she cannot stop it speaking any more than she can stop her own thoughts)

“- and lovers once, then  you have even less reason to fear him.”

She tries to make a noise and can’t.

“That is obvious. Of course you are not perfect.”

The dremora disappears with a  _pop!_  as she banishes it. She puts her head down. She walks. There are blisters on her feet. She walks faster.

Agarwaen is not perfect, not after inhaling her own fire magic, and the Aldmeri Dominion has no use for imperfect things. She can no longer serve as an interrogator and inquisitor at Ondelemar’s side. She is not that person anymore. She is not a  _person_.

The Aldmeri Dominion is ruthless and practical. Ondelemar is a ruthless and practical man. She knows his methods. She knows he desires to capture her alive. She knows his own breeding, which is only slightly less exalted than hers, and she knows his ambition. She knows that he considers her  _wasted_ on experimentation and physical labor and the things that the Thalmor do to imperfect specimens.

Agarwaen is not perfect; her pedigree, however,  _is_.


	15. Heart's Day: Gold [Inaya/Mjoll, M]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Inaya/Mjoll the Lioness, M. The fifth of six shipping drabbles.

There are stolen diamonds and emeralds in her shoes, a stolen soul gem stuffed in her quiver, tiny stolen packets of Moon Sugar sewn into the hemline of her cloak. Inaya sheds cloak, shoes and quiver at the door and catches Mjoll’s hands in hers, laces their fingers together, backs her up against the wall and smothers her protests with her mouth.

“I know,” the other woman murmurs against her lips, “what you’re doing –”

“I hope so.” Mjoll’s accent is rich and rolling, and letting her keep talking is a bad idea. But that accent makes her  _shiver_. “What am I doing?”

“I saw –”

“You’re supposed to say ‘kissing me senseless,’” Inaya interrupts. And then she does.

Mjoll makes a noise that is half pleasure and half leonine frustration, all danger, and her hands slide down to Inaya’s hips. There’s stolen gold squirreled away in the pouches on her belt. This won’t  _do_. Inaya arches against the taller woman and catches her lower lip between her teeth, insinuates herself against her until Mjoll’s hands still and she turns her face away. “I saw you with Brynjolf,” she pants. “In the market –”

“He’s always in the market.”

“He called you ‘lass.’”

“Bryn calls  _everyone_  ‘lass.’”

“ _Bryn_ ,” Mjoll echoes. Inaya’s hands are busy with her shirt, dark against pale scarred skin, and she doesn’t stop her but doesn’t help her either. “A nickname?”

Inaya pulls back, frowning.

Mjoll curses under her breath, but she cups Inaya’s cheek and her smile is steady and fond. “I’m _not_  accusing you of cheating.”

“You sure are accusing me of something.”

Mjoll gathers her breath. “I  _know_  what you’re doing –”

And because Mjoll’s face is hard, because this has gone on far too long, because her heart is in her throat and there’s the pain of a tiny diamond stuck in her sock, Inaya shakes her head and drops to her knees.

She has very, very clever fingers, well-practiced on traps and locks and pockets. They are clever on the ties of Mjoll’s trousers. Her tongue is clever as well. Mjoll  _swears_  and rakes her fingers through Inaya’s short hair until it stands on end, cups the curve of her skull. “I know –” she begins.

“Distracting you.”

“I-I’m searching your pockets –”

“And inside them?” Inaya prompts, softly. Cringes when the other woman can’t see. She  _knows_  this is bad, that there will be jail and slamming doors and drawn swords later, but there is a stolen diamond embedding itself in the tender flesh between her toes and there is this stolen  moment of Mjoll’s legs shaking as she tries to hold herself up. When Mjoll curses the Thieves’ Guild and their mothers, Inaya swears to her fathers that there  _is_  no Thieves’ Guild and licks a delicate line over her flesh that makes the woman wail. And when she wails, Inaya suckles at the pale skin of her inner thigh. Leaving bruises. Marks.  _Danger,_ says this Shadowmark,  _Protected. Safe._


	16. Heart's Day: Blood [Etain/Aela, G]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Etain/Aela the Huntress, G. The last of six shipping drabbles.

They come back to themselves on the banks of a freezing creek. Deer scatter. Swallows burst from the bushes and wheel into the sky. Etain trips over herself as her body tries to resolve four feet into two, and she gashes her hand on a rock.

Aela rolls to her feet without incident. As ever. She has been doing this for longer than Etain. She is more comfortable in her lupine skin than the Bosmer could ever be; because when Etain sucks on her bleeding palm, she’s murmuring a quiet thanks to Y’ffre that the Wild Hunt hasn’t taken her and she’s been given her two-footed skin  _back_.

It’s all very heady.

It’s not something she likes to think about.

Proper thought is always  _hard_ , though, after an evening of blood in her mouth and a wolf’s instincts raging through her brain. There’s something  _sharp_ about what they do. Pure. Sweet, like the way the pain of suckling on this wound is sweet. Etain glances sideways and sees Aela studying her, and her expression isn’t yet wholly human. Sharp and sweet and a bit hungry all at once.

“What?”

“I thought –”

But Aela shakes her head and only moves to pull on her clothes.

Etain does not. She stays crouched in the mud. The blood from her hand swirls down the stream. She studies the other woman. Etain is dark and compact and wiry compared to Aela’s sleekness, but there are similarities. Similar scars. A way of moving. It takes her a moment to realize Aela’s staring back.

“ _There_ ,” she says, “that’s it. Most everyone makes some comment on my body before now.”

Etain shrugs. “Do you want me to?”

Aela goes still. Her lips purse. “I thought you were interested.”

If she repeats  _do you want me to be_ , Aela will likely punch her. “We’re shield-sisters.”

“ _Sister_  doesn’t mean –”

“Comrades. Whatever.” Etain frowns at her bleeding hand. “I don’t – I’ve never – It’s not that I’m not interested.” She growls under her breath. “I’m not interested.”

The  _in that way_  floats downstream between them.

“It’s not something that’s been a part of my life,” the Bosmer explains. “Other people. Not me. But – you’re –”

The only things she can come up with are  _shield-sister_  and  _you are the only person I would never murder_  and  _if I wanted to it would be you_ , and none of those hit the mark at all.

Proper thought is always  _hard_  after time as a wolf. And this is a heady thing. And the only thoughts in her brain that really make  _sense_  are nonsensical ones about how the taste of blood is the best and sharpest and sweetest intimacy she needs. She’s had Aela’s blood in her mouth. The thought makes something shiver down her spine.

Aela eyes her sidelong. “And if I said I were –”

Etain licks her lips. Taste of blood there too. “Still not interested.”

Aela gives a bark of a laugh. “Put your clothes on.”


	17. Where You Hang Your Enemy's Head [Etain & Gabriella, G]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Etain & Gabriella, G. Written for theratophile on Tumblr, who requested more information about Etain's family - biological, Dark Brotherhood, or both.

“You didn’t have to-“

“You’re welcome.” Etain hunkers down on the floor and keeps shivering. There’s a spreading puddle of water underneath her, and the air in the Sanctuary is  _frigid_ for this part of Skyrim, but at least Gabriella’s favorite knitting needles are no longer at the bottom of the pool. Stupid pool. She has no idea why it’s even  _there._  She makes a small noise as the Dunmer drapes a blanket over her and holds a fire spell out between her cupped hands to help get her dry. “Thanks.”

“I mean it. You  _really_  didn’t have to –“

“Shut up.”

“I  _have_ telekinesis spells. I could have pulled them out, no swimming required.”

“I’ve seen your so-called telekinesis spells. Shut up.” Etain huddles down tighter and wipes the dripping hair out of her face. “I’ll be warm in a minute.”

Gabriella sighs and waves her hand so that the fire arcs off and swirls into a merry, crackling little ball of flame at their feet. She sits down next to Etain. “What was it like at the Bruma Sanctuary?”

Etain snorts. “Cold.”

About half a minute of silence goes by.

“…Sorry.”

“Well, as long a you’re going to huddle here and shiver to death, we might as well make pleasant conversation.”

“Mmmph.” The Bosmer goes back to wringing water from her hair. “It was different. Actually kept the Tenets. Uniforms were better.”

“Prettier?”

“Yes.”

_“Jealous.”_

“That whole ‘treat each other like a family’ thing actually  _worked_  too.”

Gabriella arches one thin eyebrow. “We try to –“

“No you don’t.”

The  _you (_ not  _we)_ lands with a wet  _plop_  in the pool and drifts down into the depths where the knitting needles had lain. Both women watch it. Etain, for once, is the first to talk, determining that her undergarments are mostly dry and moving to pull her clothes back on. “Sorry.”

“Babette says we all have  _types_ ,” Gabriella observes, absently waving her hand to make the fire burn blue and violet and silver. “Reasons we’re here. She thinks you’re here because you’re trying to find a family again.”

“I’m not.” The Bosmer’s nose wrinkles. “I mean. I have –“

“They’re still alive?”

Etain says nothing. She’s lacing up her shirt with short, efficient little motions, and she doesn’t look at Gabriella when she finally starts to speak. “Mom was taken in for questioning when I was little. Dad when I was sixteen. Two cousins vanished when the Inquisitors went through Falinesti, they might still be in reeducation somewhere. Grandfather finally got himself caught the last year I was home. So it was down to me, my uncle, another cousin and Aé when I – left.” Her eyebrows draw together. “Aé – Aednat. My little sister.”

Gabriella’s face is calm and neutral. “So they’re still alive?”

The Bosmer gives a one-shoulder shrug. “They’re in Valenwood.”

“Yes,” she says gently, “but that’s not really an ans-“

“I’m here for a job, not adoption. Gabriella’s not Dunmer name. Where’s your family?”

The Dunmer is quiet. Etain finishes dressing, and when she’s done Gabriella grips her knitting needles tight in one hand and offers the other to pull the woman to her feet. She takes it.


	18. Arrival [All, G]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Etain, Niamh, Bethoc, Inaya & Agarwaen, G. How or why everyone came to Skyrim.

**I. Etain**

The healers want to keep her for another fortnight, but Etain climbs the wall and sneaks out in the middle of the night. Her eye’s healed enough. Nothing is going to restore its sight to more than vague blots of light and shadow. She can live with this. The night air in the Jerall Mountains makes the wounds throb and ache as if half her head is splitting open, but she can live with that too. It’s only physical pain. And physical pain can be  _good –_ it can distract her from the uneasy, familiar ache of watching things burn at her back, watching her family go mad and then being the only one left alive.

She leaves Cyrodiil and Bruma and that cracked-open wreck of a Brotherhood Sanctuary behind, and by morning it’s snowed enough to cover her footprints.

When she left Valenwood she’d had nowhere to go. This time she has an inkling. She met the Brotherhood’s Keeper, once, when she was on contract in Cheydinhal. He’d talked about taking the Night Mother to the Family in Skyrim if things in Cyrodiil ever went south. Etain pulls her hood tight up over her face to shield her bad eye and keeps on walking north. It seems as good a plan as any.

**II. Niamh**

The  _crack_ of magic breaking open the front door is her only warning. Niamh springs up, scattering soul gems and long annotated pages of Daedric runes. She’s been planning for this. Her fingers fumble on the casting but she gets it off: a cheap invisibility spell and an experimental one to chill her skin and slow her breathing and mask her from detect life magic. The second spell gives out by the time she’s out the back door, but by then the Thalmor are too preoccupied with confiscating all her research to notice.

Niamh slips into the Bloated Float on the waterfront that evening, hood pulled high. She finds Legate Selone at a corner table. The woman is out of uniform and she has not touched her drinks; her mouth is hard, she looks  _exhausted,_ and Niamh swears there’s more grey in her red hair than there had been this morning.

“They’re charging you with necromancy and sedition,” her mother murmurs. “You know I can’t do anything.”

“I know.” Niamh slumps. “I’m going –”

“Don’t tell me.”

Still, they both know. There are places the Thalmor aren’t so strong. Niamh’s father served under General Tullius. Mother and daughter do not talk about this; they don’t talk much at all, just sit in the corner and keep their eyes on the door, and wonder what they’re going to tell Niamh’s little brother.

**III. Bethoc**

She comes to in pieces. First is noise, grumbling and grinding, wheel and axle and the clop of horse hooves. Then light. It’s blinding. Bethoc squints. Her head throbs, but at least the light is a sign that the damned Imperials don’t have a bag over her head anymore. She shakes her head back and forth, stupidly, as shapes come out of the light and begin to make sense again.

Trees. Sky. Cart.

Manacles on her wrists.

The Stormcloak lieutenant speaking to her, saying she’s  _finally awake,_ apologizing for getting her mixed up in this.

His words don’t make sense, and it’s not because they sound like they’re coming from underwater. Bethoc tries to find her own words, but it seems that speech is the last thing to come back after being hit over the head with the wrong end of a mace. She wants to tell him that she wasn’t  _crossing the border,_ a true Nord would never leave Skyrim, and she wasn’t lurking around the edges of their camp by  _chance;_ she wants to give the speech she had prepared, she would get down on bended knee if the swaying cart allowed and beg to join them –

And then she realizes that the man sitting next to her is Ulfric, and the speech goes flying out of her head.

And then there’s the whole business with the dragon, and it seems rather beside the point.

**IV. Inaya**

Inaya wants to laugh. Crossing the border illegally?  _This?_ This is but a footnote in the list of things she’s done. If she’d stolen the country out from under them,  _that_ would be something.

She wants to laugh, and she does – until they take her things before they shove her on the cart. Her pockets are full of stolen coin, contraband black soul gems, a precious vial of Balmora Blue, but this isn’t what makes Inaya spit in the Imperials’ faces.

They take her  _sword._ Or the remains of her sword. It’s not much. Just a snapped-off hilt. Her Alik’ir brethren had broken it when they threw her out on the border of Hammerfell, and she hadn’t cared at the time. It was just a stupid sword and their stupid outdated ideas of honor. She’d gotten what she wanted out of the order – training, respectability, travel – and she’d laughed in their stern faces, and she hadn’t  _cared._

But when the Legion officer goes to confiscate the hilt from her, he finds himself wiping Inaya’s spit from his left cheek. He takes  it anyway. He throws it into the bushes – and then they’re herding her and the Stormcloaks and the horse-thief into their stupid cart, and she doesn’t have time to see where it lands.

**V. Agarwaen**

She can’t speak. She’s tried, many times, but all that comes out is a rattling whine. They make her try until it  _burns_ again, until there are tears pricking at her eyes and blood running down the ruined inside of her throat, but she can’t, she  _can’t._  The fireball seared everything away. She’s lucky she can _breathe._

They run tests on her, on the durability of vocal chords and the effectiveness of different types of healing spells. It’s not to make her better. It’s too cold and calculated and cruel. She is flawed, now, permanently so, and therefore not worth saving; and in any case this is not the way the Aldmeri Dominion _works._

She can’t speak – but she can cast, and it seems her jailors have forgotten this, because there comes a day when they skip her daily dose of magicka poison and she summons a Frost Atronach and has it lift the cell door off its hinges. Ice crackles the blood on the floor, cracks under her bare feet when she walks across it. She knows this prison inside and out; she’s been posted here for a decade, dealing with sedition from the Imperial City just across the bay, and she knows all the passages and all the quirks and all the guard patrols. She knows the men. They’re good men. They served under her well. She tries not to think as she rips them apart with fire and frost and summoned Daedric claws.

Once outside, she doesn’t bother avoiding the roads. She knows the schedules of all the Thalmor patrols well enough to circumvent them. She set many of those schedules herself. She heads north, toward Skyrim and the unfolding of the Dominion’s plans. They will not look for her there. She will be able to help from the shadows, pull strings, prove to her people that she is still  _useful_ even though she is damaged and even though she has to stop walking and rest every hour because her lungs barely  _work_ anymore. She can do this.

She pulls her hood high over her face to hide the tell-tale burns scars around her mouth. The Justicar robes are borrowed and bloody and a bit singed, but they fit well. Almost perfectly.


End file.
